In 2007, eight out of ten Australians say that they have used the internet.

•    8.10 How often do you look at goods on the internet but when it comes time to buy, you purchase from local stores?

A majority of our sample had used the internet to research goods before buying them from a local store (65.1%). Just over a quarter of users said they did this often (25.5%).

•    Almost all of our youngest respondents (18 to 24) are on-line (95.1%), as are 90.6% of 25 to 34 years old, and still the great majority of Australians in their mid-thirties to end-forties (83.7%). Those between 50 and 64 years of age are more than twice as likely to use the internet (66.1%) than those over 64 (29.8%).

•    Over three quarters of our sample check their email at least once a day, with more than a quarter checking several times. Just under 4% do not use email at all suggesting that email is still the most ubiquitous application on the web.

•    Just under a quarter of users (23.3%) posted on discussion or message boards with around half doing of these people (13.8%) doing so at least weekly.

•    For users the internet has become a very important source of information. It is more important than the traditional media of newspapers, radio and television. Just under seven in ten users described the internet as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ (68.5%).

•    For television the corresponding figure is 32.6%, for newspapers 46.6% and for radio 45.9%. The difference is even more marked when we look just at the ‘very important’ rating. The proportion of users rating the internet as ‘very important’ (36.6%) is more than double that for radio (14.5%), newspapers (13.8%) and more than four times the figure for television (8.5%).

•    A majority of users look for local community news on the net (57.1%). Well over a third do so at least weekly (35.1%) with 16.2% looking on a daily basis.

•    Just over four in ten internet users are using the net to look up information about restaurants (40.6%). Just fewer than three in ten are doing so at least monthly (5.9% weekly and 21.6% monthly).

•    Just under a half of our sample of internet users purchased at least one product a month (46.2%). Of those that do purchase online, just under 65% purchased one or two times a month (29.9% of users overall). At the other end of the scale, 2.6% of users purchased eleven times or more in a month.

•    Those people who use the internet to make purchases spent just over $200 a month on average. This figure though is skewed by a small number making quite large purchases (the median was $100). Almost one in ten people who purchase online are spending $500 or more a month (9.9%).

•    The vast majority of users (82.9%) research products on the internet. For just under half of users this is regular experience with 12% getting product information daily and a further 31% doing so on a weekly basis.

CCi Digital Futures Report
The Internet in Australia, Scott Ewing and Julian Thomas Julianne Schiessl
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology

This report is available at www.cci.edu.au/projects/digital-futures
Contact us at digitalfutures@swin.edu.au